(Roughly) Daily

We are on the cusp of the biggest economic transformation, of any kind, for 200 years. While arguments rage about plant- versus meat-based diets, new technologies will soon make them irrelevant. Before long, most of our food will come neither from animals nor plants, but from unicellular life. After 12,000 years of feeding humankind, all farming except fruit and veg production is likely to be replaced by ferming: brewing microbes through precision fermentation. This means multiplying particular micro-organisms, to produce particular products, in factories.I know some people will be horrified by this prospect. I can see some drawbacks. But I believe it comes in the nick of time…

Scientists are replacing crops and livestock with food made from microbes and water. It may save humanity’s bacon: “Lab-grown food will soon destroy farming – and save the planet.”

* French epicurean Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

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As we dig in, we might recall that it was on this date in 1943 that an official of the Meats Division of the wartime Office of Price Administration (OPA) announced that, for the duration of World War II, frankfurters (or ‘hot dogs’) would be replaced with “Victory Sausages,” in which a substantial proportion of the meat in those sausages would itself be replaced with “an unspecified amount of soybean meal or some other substitute.”

Victory was achieved; but it was not, in this dimension in any case, sweet.

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